


Survive

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Draven is not a dick, Established Relationship, F/M, Injury, Medical stuff, anxiety watching over a loved on in hospital, worried Jyn, wounded Cassian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 14:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15269073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian has been badly wounded on a mission and is unconscious in the med-bay.  His next round of treatment is in an hour; meanwhile, two humans worried about him are staying by his side.





	Survive

There are three little lights on the monitor.  One is green, and weak but steady; one rises up and down a marked scale; one flashes.  Body temperature, blood oxygenation levels, heart rate.  The med-droid explained it all to Jyn a year ago, when she sat here, shell-shocked but mobile in a ward full of casualties from Scarif.  A dozen of them, then, clinging to life or unconscious after surgery.  Cassian Andor in the nearest bed to hers, broken but alive, with his monitor lights beeping and blinking, and his eyes blinking too, opening at last.

His eyes are closed, now, and he looks unnaturally pale; lips dry, yellowish shadows in his skin.  A loose cover and the white hospital bandages hide the wound in his abdomen and the livid new burns on his ribs.  A thin muscular arm lies over the sheet, well within reach but she hesitates to touch him; there’s a cannula in the back of his hand, a needle in his wrist, everything looks delicate and he’s so fragile, she’s terrified to dislodge something, hurt him, make things worse.

Even worse than they are already.

There’s a brown scar on the lower quarter of his chest, on the right, half caught under the crisp glue-tapes fixing an electrode in position.  A scar she’s traced so many times, with her hands, with her lips.  It still pained him sometimes, he’d told her once in a whisper, late on a dark Hoth night, her fingertips caressing the discolouration.  Residual nerve damage.  Krennic’s blaster shot.

So many scars.  She could enumerate them if she allowed herself.  If it wouldn’t drive her insane. 

He’d survived all those other wounds, all those blows and stabbings, blasters, projectiles, explosions, collapsing buildings.  All of it, even the worst.  He had to live through this.

He’s scheduled for another bacta immersion in an hour.  Meanwhile Jyn watches over him, her partner, her lover, her heart’s-home.  She bunches her hands into fists, pulling in on herself, refusing to give in to the urge to grab him and cling on.  Let him lie still, let him rest…

He’s had to watch and wait for her like this, she knows.  More than once. 

Reckless, over-confident, too quick to make the sacrifice move; she can almost hear him berating her as he hugs her close and grips her head to his shoulder.  _Jyn, you fool, you mustn’t do things like that, promise me you won’t keep doing things like that, **please**_ …

Cassian is quick to get out of the firing line, quick to blend in and vanish in a crowd, quick to cut his losses.  She still gets swept away sometimes by the need to save one more life, tear down the enemy’s flag, crack one more ‘trooper’s skull.

By rights it should be her in this bed, not him.

She’s been working so hard on learning Alliance ways.  His ways.  Follow orders unless circumstances make them impossible; remember the bigger strategy, don’t take unnecessary risks, be cautious; put the mission first, your team’s safety second, your own wishes in last place.  No; far behind last place, so far back that they might as well not exist.  Trying so hard to acquire the same discipline he’s built up over years of training.  And she’d kept to it this time.  Had clenched her fists against her own instinct when the comms went shaky.  Had stayed put, waiting on the shuttle as ordered, accepting that intervention would compromise her partner with far more certainty that letting him operate alone, trusting him to sort out the problem.  Whatever it was. 

It might just have been a poor comm link, after all.  No reason at all to suspect anything else, except that pinching of fear in her ribs, and the fact her crystal was cool when it should have been hot, cool as if she’d been wearing it outdoors, in the rain, in the foggy rain of a cold winter morning running through muddy green fields, trying to get home…

And then the comm had crackled, the signal breaking up still but there, a voice gasping, fragments of words, and as she turned towards it in sudden horror, the footsteps behind her were fast and stumbling; and Cassian staggered out of the undergrowth and fell at the base of the ramp, and did not get up.

She’d dragged him on board, yelling “ _Launch! **Launch!**_ ” to K in the cockpit.

_I thought I was doing the right thing.  I obeyed orders, stayed at the ship, K and I stayed at the kriffing ship like we were supposed to, we let you go alone, work alone, stand alone.  Face them alone.  We didn’t come for you._

_I didn’t come for you._

A hand comes down on her shoulder, firm but not ungentle.  Too gentle certainly for K, who knows she’s not bothered anymore by his presence.  It’s not the droid’s style to signal his arrival like that, tactfully, carefully; he’d simply march in and address her if he were here. 

But K-2 is probably still haranguing Command over the lapses that led to this mission being sanctioned in the first place.  He’d had a lot of statistics to cite even before they set off; he’ll have many more now, with the mission a farcical disaster and the leading officer escaping death by a hair.

She spares the hand a glance, and it’s human, bony and very pale-skinned, with reddish knuckles and nails trimmed down to the quick.

_Ah._

Jyn has been sitting very still, for a very long time.  Every joint seems to hurt when she tries to gather herself to stand, since there’s an officer present and Cassian would stand, so by rights and as his representative, so should she.  General Draven pushes her down before she can do more than shift in her seat.  He clears his throat uncomfortably and says “At ease, Sergeant.”

For a moment more his hand rests on her shoulder before he pulls back.  He walks round the bed and stands on the far side.  He’s no longer hovering behind her and she’s grateful for that.  Draven is an unnervingly good lurker.

Probably where Cassian gets it from.

When she looks at him, he’s almost impassive.  His eyes are fixed on Cassian. 

It’s a cold face, in general, Jyn thinks; cold and disappointed and shut-in.  After a whole year of watching the General she’s still only seen him smile twice; when her father’s work was destroyed, and the day three weeks later when Cassian hobbled on crutches into the main briefing room on Home One and greeted him with a calm “Good morning, sir.”

Draven’s expression now is hard and lost.  He’s drawn both hands behind his back and stands with his feet braced apart.  At ease, but the posture is a poor simulacrum of ease at the best of times and not one jot easeful now, on him.

“Did you speak to the 2-1B?” he asks.

“They told me he – they said his chances are good.”

The General purses his lips and nods, once, a tight movement.  She imagines tendons stretched to breaking point, all over his weary body.  Probably another thing Cassian gets from him.  He swallows and says “Yes” and “Good” and then “Captain Andor has – has survived worse.”

“Yes.  Yes, sir.  He has.”

And that’s it; no more words of consolation or emotion, but they remain in the med-bay.  Cassian’s body between them for another hour, until his next treatment.  His closed eyes, under their bruised-looking lids.  His thin, tired, closed mouth.  His thin slack hands. 

He breathes silently, and the hour passes, and he’s still breathing.

They touch a hand, each, when the medics come to take him back to the tanks and the next immersion; then go outside, to wait.  For the news that has to come, news of the one person they both trust to come back.  He has to survive.


End file.
